Hunter, Hunted
by summertower17
Summary: Roni Hunter loved little, liked less, and desired not. When she and her twin sister are forced to run away for being mutants, they seek refuge in Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. The stage has been set. Shadows meet Flames. The Hunter is the Hunted.
1. Running

**Hello there people of FanFiction and beyond! Lately I've been addicted to _X-Men_ and I've been playing around with a couple of ideas in my head. I decided to just go on ahead and type them down. Well, this is it. I've been having doubts about whether to share my Twins to the world or not. I hope you guys would love them as much as I do. Let me know if you do. Reviews are very much welcome. Anyway, this is _Hunter, Hunted._ Enjoy!**

_**- summer**_

_The Hunter Twins couldn't have been more different..._

* * *

**Running  
**

"_It's going to be all right, sir," Harry said over and over again, more worried by Dumbledore's silence than he had been by his weakened voice. "We're nearly there ... I can Apparate us both back ... don't worry ..."  
"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you."_

**- J.K. Rowling, _"Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince"  
_**

They ran. Twigs made crackling noises underneath their feet. Their breaths came out in wheezing pants. Gold and black flashed in between the green trees as the twins hurried past them. _They_ had found them. The twins knew not of what they planned to do with them, but since guns have never really been popular symbols of diplomacy, decisions have been cemented: They wanted nothing to do with them.

The blonde twin's foot snagged on a root. She cried out and fell, pain shooting through her leg. She put her hands out in front of her so as not to have her face planted into the soil and hissed as her skin made contact with the hard ground. _Great, I'm being chased by freaking soldier-like dudes, my foot might be broken and now I think I have an abrasion. Just great_. She thought.

"Shit." The twin with the black hair cursed and ran back to her sister. She took her sister's arm and slung it across her shoulders and snaked one arm around her waist. "Come on Gini! Stand up. _Come on!_" The blonde twin, Gini, struggled to her feet, using her sister as support, wincing all the while. They hobbled on as fast as they could.

"Roni," Gini panted. "I don't think I could keep up any longer." She was tired, scared, and her body hurt all over, her foot felt like it was being shoved into burning hot coals.

"You can do this Gini." The black-haired twin, Roni, said. Her face was set and her voice was hard as she half-dragged her sister through the woods with renewed vigour though her body screamed at her to stop. She was not about to let herself and her sister die. She knew subliminally that being taken by _them_ meant certain death. "You said you liked being chased by guys. Let's give 'em something to chase."

"I do, but not like this!" Tears sprung to Gini's eyes. They had been running for so long now. She was tired of it. She was tired of pulling her sister down with her. _Roni's strong, she could do anything. But not with me around._ Gini thought. "Roni just go. Just leave me. I'm slowing you down!" Gini practically screamed and the tears were now running down her grime-ridden face, leaving shiny wet tracks.

"Shut up, Gini." Roni said, voice terrifyingly even. She was mad at her sister for even thinking something like that, but she decided that now was hardly the time for such emotions. "If you get taken, I'm coming with you. We're in this together, remember?"

_Zip._ The twin's heads snapped to the tree right beside them. Stuck on the bark were three of those nasty tranquilizer darts. The girls knew they were tranquilizers from way back in Texas. Roni got knocked-out for almost half of the day. "_Go!_" Roni shouted and they started to amble faster. They were so close now. The twins could hear the twigs snapping and leaves rustling behind them. Roni noticed that the men weren't going for subtlety anymore. _They're sure that they're gonna get us. _She thought.

The ground started to slope upwards making it harder to run. Roni was now officially dragging Gini. _Zip._ The darts flew past Roni's ear and wedged themselves into the tree in front of them. _That was close. Too close. And it's as close as they'll ever get._ Roni decided. And then the strangest thing happened. A voice spoke. And it was neither Gini's nor Roni's.

'_Go on. Hurry. Once you have gotten up the slope, the tree line would not be far off. Get through and help will be there.'_

It had the opposite effect for the twins halted for a second. They looked at each other with wide eyes before Roni faced forward and started up the slope again. On any other day, she would not at all trust a disembodied voice that spoke inside her head. But Gini heard it, too. And it was either the voice, or _them_. She chose the voice.

_Zip. Zip. Zip._ The men were closing in faster now. They had almost reached the bottom of the slope. Roni forced her legs to go forward and Gini put pressure on her good leg to lessen her sister's burden. When they reached the top, the ground evened out before them. But the men were already halfway up the slope. They would never make it together.

"Gini, go! Through the tree line. Get some help. I'll hold them off." Roni said and let go of her sister's waist and propped her upright.

"No! I'm not gonna leave you!" Gini said, grabbing her sister's hand. Partly for support.

"If you don't go now, we're goners Gini! Go! _JUST GO!_" Roni said, her frustration making her shout. Gini looked at her with a pained expression and hobbled to the tree line. Holding on to the trees to keep herself standing.

_I can't be weak. Roni's out there fighting._ Gini thought. She had blocked out everything. Thinking of nothing but getting through that tree line and getting help. Her foot was begging her to stop and by now her hands were bleeding from constant exposure to the rough bark of the trees that she used for support. Her progress was slow, but better than none at all. And finally, for what seemed like forever, she reached the tree line. And what she saw was something she was not expecting.

_A school._

It was _huge _building, with stone walls covered in ivy made more impressive by the grand terraces that artfully sprouted from it. There was a great courtyard with a few small fountains and a big one right in the center. And that was only _one_ part of the school. Gini would bet all she had, though it wasn't much, that the rest of the school was also this breathtaking, maybe even more. She snapped out of her admiring, remembering what she was supposed to do. The voice had said that there was gonna be help here. And help there was.

The school also had a basketball court and there were people there. Teenagers, by the look of it. But now was not the time to be picky about one's saviours. "Help!" Gini shouted. She hopped to the basketball court. "Help! Please! Somebody!" The boys at the court who were playing stopped and turned to look at the direction of the shouting. When they saw Gini, they rushed to her. One guy reached her first and caught her by the elbows before she fell. She gripped his arms and steadied herself. Like the school, the guy was huge. She could feel his taut muscles tense under her injured hands. "You okay? What's wrong?"

Gini looked up at his face. Wow. That sealed it. He was H-O-T, _hot._ She shook her head. Now was not the time for that. Her sister could be dying out there and she was checking out some hot guy. "M-my sister! S-she's out there in the woods. There are guys out there, and they chased us and-and – _please_ go help her!" Gini stammered as she tried to get the words out as quickly as she could.

"Rogue, take her." The buff guy said as he handed Gini to a girl wearing dark clothing and gloves. Her dark brown hair had two white streaks that framed her face nicely. "Bobby go get help. Tell the professors. John come with me." One boy, Bobby, ran off to the school to get the professors. The other one, John, went with the big guy into the woods to help Roni.

"Come on, I'll get you to the infirmary." The girl, Rogue said, her words were laced with a Southern twang.

"No! I wanna go to my sister." Gini looked at her with pleading eyes. Rogue looked like she was about to argue but the look on Gini's face made her relent. They followed the boys back to the woods where Roni was. Sounds of a fight came from it. As the two girls came through to the tree line they saw Roni, sitting on the ground panting and watching the two boys fight off the soldiers. There was a dead man beside her. Gini found it very unsettling.

Roni's Bowie knife was clutched in her right hand, blade slick and wet with blood. There was also blood on her mouth and her lip was split. A fresh bruise was forming on her left cheekbone. She looked as Gini felt: About to pass out.

Gini went to her, one arm around Rogue's shoulders. She descended to the ground beside her sister, Rogue knelt beside them. Gini took her sister's left hand and squeezed it, not minding her wounds. Knowing if her sister was okay was more important. Roni squeezed back. Her eyes focused on the two boys who were fighting those men. The boy called John, it appears had power over fire. Zippo lighter in hand, he blasted streams of flames towards the soldiers and sent them retreating. The boy, who Gini had met first, had a stranger power that was hard to put a name on. It looks as if his whole body was coated in some silver metal. He was bashing those men around, like they were nothing but ragdolls. Their guns were useless on him as the bullets just ricocheted off his hard metal skin.

"Are you guys alright?" Rogue asked, looking from Gini to Roni.

"We are now." Roni said, eyes never leaving the scene in front of them.

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**Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave your comments, questions, suggestions, and corrections. They're very much loved.**


	2. Fighting

**I present to you, once again, another chapter of _Hunter, Hunted._ You might think that I only finished this now. Well, I've had it done weeks ago, but it just wasn't quite right. It didn't feel very upload-y yet. So I edited and edited. And here it is. As good as I can write it. Hope you didn't mind the wait. Hope the chapter doesn't disappoint. It's Roni centric and details the forest fight-scene so it's gonna be bloody, babes! Again this is _Hunter, Hunted._ Enjoy!**

_**- summer**_

_The Hunter Twins couldn't have been more different..._

* * *

**Fighting  
**

_The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective. Take right now, for instance._

**- James Patterson, **_**"The Angel Experiment"  
**_

There were thirty or forty of them at least. At any normal day Roni could probably have handled them all by herself. But she was tired and weak. She hadn't eaten in almost three days, hadn't slept properly for much longer. She had kept herself from going delirious by the sheer force of her will. It was for her and her sister's sake. About six of the men had now come up from the slope. She looked behind her and saw that Gini had almost reached the tree line. _Good._ Roni thought. _If I die here or get taken, at least she'll be safe._ Assuming of course that the voice had been trustworthy.

One man shot at her. She threw herself on the ground to evade the darts. Roni cursed herself to the high heavens. She could not teleport. Could not even muster enough strength to open the Void. Panting, she raised her hand and aimed it at the direction of the men. Their shadows rose from beneath their feet. Two of them were so startled, they had dropped their weapons. The shadows then proceeded to turn on their owners, punching, kicking, hitting, and beating them. Some of the spectres even had their own guns and started shooting at the men. But when the men tried to hit back and defend themselves, their attacks just went _through_ the dark phantoms. Harming them not in the least bit.

Roni would be honest. This tactic was still very weak, and she knew she could not keep it up for long. And there were still many more of those men, running up the slope or coming towards it from the forest below. Her hand quivered and for a second, the shadows started to flicker. She raised her other hand, scrunching up her forehead as she tried to keep the shadows corporeal. More men were coming up from the slope now. _I insist you stay substantial, damn it!_ She demanded to the spectres and when they didn't fall apart, she lowered her hands slowly.

She took the knife concealed in her boot and rose to her feet. She silently approached one man who was grappling with his shadow. He did not notice her, even as she took her blade and slashed it across his throat from behind him. His shadow vanished. She did this a couple more times, all the while animating more shadows to fight the incoming soldiers.

There was a sudden whoosh of air and the next thing Roni knew, she was on the ground once again with a smarting left cheek. She moved quickly and was once again on her feet. She lashed out at the man who hit her with her knife. He dodged, caught her arm as she swung it again in a wide arc, and punched her in the gut. The wind was knocked out of her and the man let go of her arm. He hit her in the face, the blow connecting with her mouth. She tumbled to the ground for the third time.

Groaning, she spat out blood. The man was grinning at her in a way Roni found disgusting. She sneered and kicked his legs out from under him. He landed beside her in a graceless heap. This made him angry. "You little bitch!" He got on top of her and wrapped his hands around her neck. _Strangulation, huh? How artless. _Roni thought. She choked as he tightened his grip on her neck, but kept her head. She still had her knife. She thought the man an idiot for not taking it away from her but thanked her lucky stars anyway (however few they were).

With great effort, she stabbed him in the stomach. This caught him off guard. She stabbed him again. This time in the chest. She stabbed him again and again and again until his hold on her neck loosened. Until his weight grew on her heavily and he had ceased to breathe. He was dead. Roni heaved him aside and kicked his body off of her.

She looked to the edge of the slope where the men were fighting their shadows. Amazed was she when she found that her trick was still active, though it had weakened greatly. The phantoms were see-through now. She once again raised her arms to strengthen her "_magic",_ though the attempt, she knew, was in vain. There were just too many of them. And her body was starting to give out. She had not really been well-conditioned in the first place. It had already been quite the feat for her to have stayed kicking this long.

Roni had just begun to resign herself to fate when quite suddenly a burst of fire sent some of the men tumbling down the slope. They screamed as they fell. Roni, who had a slightly morbid sense of humor (even in the least appropriate situations), found it quite amusing. She looked behind her and found the fire's source: a teenage boy. Roni raised her eyebrows. _Help, huh?_ She thought. She found it strange that the help would come in the form of a teenage boy. Mutant or no. Then another one came. Roni could hardly describe this person as a boy, though he probably was. He had a striking appearance. If you asked Roni to describe him in one word it would be _big._ She still held the same opinion up to present day. But what made him striking was the fact that he was silver. Yes, _silver._

From head to foot, the big guy wearing the basketball jersey seemed to be coated in some sort of metal. It seemed to be very hard and impenetrable as when the men fired at him, the bullets just bounced off his skin. And he seemed to be very strong as well. Him versus the men was a battle very much like that of a wild bull versus a litter of kittens.

In Roni's distraction with her unlikely saviours, she had dropped her hands and relinquished control over the shadows. She let the two boys fight the men. The other boy, the one who shot fire at them, held a Zippo lighter in one hand. He had hair that was either a very light brown or a very dark blonde. The look on his face gave Roni the impression that he _liked_ roasting other people. _Alive._ Other people being humans.

Some of the men were now retreating. But there were still more who came. Roni had to give them credit for their resolution. She looked at the dead man beside her. Her Bowie knife was sticking out of his back. She had long ago settled with the fact that in order to keep herself alive – to keep _Gini_ alive – she had to have been reconciled with the fact that some people had to die by her doing. It was either her and her sister, or _them._ She chose the former. In retrospect, it had not really been a very selfish decision for the people she'd killed had all in one way or another, intended to cause her and Gini harm. But that did not take away Roni's feeling of corruption when a body would drop dead at her feet because of her doing.

She made her face blank and took her knife out of the man. It made a fleshy, slithering sound as it passed through his bodily tissues. Gripping it in her hand, she watched the two boys fight, too tired to do much anything else.

After a while (short or long, Roni knew not), Gini had sat beside her on the dirt and the girl that had came with her knelt beside them. Roni felt her sister take her hand and squeeze it. It was Gini's silent way of asking 'Are you okay?' Roni squeezed back in affirmation.

Coincidentally, the girl who came with Gini asked, "Are you guys alright?"

"We are now," was Roni's simple response.

"I'm Rogue, by the way." The girl said. Roni gave her a studying glance. Her skin was light which was emphasized by her dark clothing choice. Covering her hands was a matching pair of gloves. Her brown eyes glittered prettily and they held an honest light. But what made her standout were the two white streaks in her brown hair. "Bobby should be here, soon. The professors are gonna be with him. They'll get things sorted out."

Not long after she said it, a man and a woman came through the trees followed by _another_ teenage boy. The man had a strange choice of eyewear. The visor he wore seemed to aid his mutation though. So it wasn't much of a fashion statement as it was for function. Red beams of light shot out of it and hit one of the men, sending him down the slope.

The woman was an exotic beauty. Her feathery hair was silvery-white and looked like it was made of flowing touchable moonlight. Her skin was mocha-colored. Her eyes, which had initially been dark, were now a filmy milk-white and sparks danced around it. Roni noticed that when her eyes had shifted colors a fog had started to come in and the air seemed much colder, the sky had darkened considerably although moments ago, it had been a fairly sunny day. The woman aimed her hands in the direction of the offenders and lightning shot from the tips of her fingers. The air smelled of electrocuted flesh. _She barbecues more efficiently than Zippo Boy does._ Roni thought.

It did not take very long for the other mutants to drive all of the men away. When they had, they approached the twins. The woman with the white hair knelt in front of them. Her eyes were back to normal. She looked back and forth between the two girls. "Are you two alright?" She asked, looking and sounding very concerned. Roni, who was not very used to kind strangers, became wary. But she rolled the dice and decided to accept whatever help was being offered unless and until it was not needed.

She looked at Gini. "Her foot," she said to the woman, "it might be broken."

The man dropped on one knee beside Gini. He took off her shoe and examined her foot with gentle but sure fingers. "Her ankle is sprained. It's already swollen. We'd better get Jean to fix her up." Although Roni knew he meant well, she didn't like it when he said "fix her up" like Gini was some sort of _thing._ Her grip tightened on her Bowie knife. These people might've saved them, but that didn't mean they could be trusted.

The woman had introduced herself as Ororo Munroe. But said that everyone called her Storm. The man was Scott Summers. His other name was Cyclops. Roni found their names very fitting. They had explained that they were professors in the school that was beyond the tree line: Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Gifted meaning _mutant._

They had the big guy, whose name turned out to be Peter (now normal and fleshy-looking), carry Gini to the school. Roni stood up. Her vision doubled and she swayed on her feet.

"Whoa hey." Someone caught her by the arm. It was Zippo Boy.

She shrugged herself out of his hold. "I think I can stand by myself, thanks." She said callously. Zippo Boy raised a brow at her as if he very much doubted that.

"Suit yourself." He shrugged. Though he still walked close behind her.

Not more than five steps later Roni felt a bout of nausea again. She swayed and leaned against a tree, breathing hard. Her vision darkened and down she went. Ready arms caught her before she hit the ground though she was barely half aware of them. The last thing she remembered was someone shouting her name.

She blacked out.

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**Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave your comments, questions, suggestions, and corrections. They're very much loved.**


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